


Ordinary life

by Deputychairman



Series: Incendiary materials in war [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Blowjobs, M/M, Pining, Poe is very brave, Sharing a Bed, but his bravery is combat-based, when casual sex isn't casual at all, which doesn't help here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 12:32:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6657832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh, you know,” he says. “Had a run in with the First Order, I was, uh – I got rescued. By a Stormtrooper who deserted and completed my mission. I’m pretty much in love with him.” </p><p>Kes barks out a laugh.</p><p>“Yeah, that’s how everyone reacts,” Poe says wryly. “Which should probably tell me something.”</p><p>Kes peers at him. “Hell, you mean it, don’t you? I thought it was just a - you know, a figure of speech.”</p><p>“No. But it was a very important mission, and he really did save my life.”</p><p>He’s only a little bit offended when Kes tips his head back and roars with laughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ordinary life

 

Finn and Rey are inseparable.

They eat together and train together and watch holos in Finn’s room together. They sit tangled up together and go off exploring together and stand in the supplies line together.

The only thing that isn’t clear is whether they are sleeping together.

Poe has never seen them kiss, but that doesn’t mean anything. He knows that Finn has slept with a lot of people on base and Poe didn’t see him kissing them most of them either – he’s experimenting, not an exhibitionist. They _could_ kiss in front of people if they wanted to: other couples do. There are all configurations of relationship out there, and standards of polite company on base have settled to a mostly happy medium between the most expressive species and the most private. Anything up to heavy petting is overlooked or smiled fondly at, but once you start getting undressed someone will clear their throat and suggest you take it behind closed doors.

Finn and Rey never do anything like that, and Poe doesn’t ask. He’s not going to ask. It’s none of his business, is it?

He has plenty of opportunities when he _could_ ask, though. Finn seems to have decided that Poe is the best candidate for introducing Rey to life with the Resistance, and when they aren’t training or hiking in the forest, they turn up at Poe’s door. It’s weirdly flattering, even if it isn’t exactly the kind of attention he really wants from Finn. He’ll take whatever Finn’s offering right now.

Attention from Rey is slightly terrifying. He knows the Force isn’t something visible, but sometimes he thinks he can actually see it like a shimmer to her skin or a light in her eyes. Before what happened on the _Finalizer_ he never thought much about the Force, or the people who have it: it just was, and they just were.

The first time Rey really focuses on him is a shock: he can _feel_ it - a split second of pressure like the g force at the top of a dive, and an awareness of Rey, the immensity of her power and her curiosity. They’re sitting in leaf-filtered sunlight in Finn’s quarters when it happens, and he jerks back as if she’s struck him.

She’s on her feet at once, backing away from him with one hand over her mouth in horror, the other held up in desperate apology.

“It’s ok,” he says. It probably is ok – he doesn’t understand what just happened. It was a shock, but it wasn’t painful, nothing like his previous encounter with a Force user that left him broken, his secrets ripped away. Finn is looking sharply between the two of them, knowing that he missed something, and Poe doesn’t know what to tell him.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know that could happen.”

“ _What_ could happen?” Finn asks.

“You – touched me,” Poe says slowly. “Inside my head. I could feel you were there.”

“I didn’t mean to. I’ll be more careful,” she says, jaw clenched. She takes another step away from him, like she’s heading for the door.

“No, it’s fine,” he says, meaning it. He knows the difference between being hit and being bumped into. She _could_ hit him, if she wanted to, but she didn’t.

She squares her shoulders and says, “You should ask me something private, and I’ll tell you. Then it’ll be fair.”

Finn’s head snaps round to her like he’s scandalised by the idea, or wants to know what she saw that made her offer.

If Poe was going to take her up on it, he knows exactly what he’d ask. He’d ask if she’s in love with Finn, if they’re sleeping together and why they spend so much time with him.

Instead he shakes his head, smiles at her. Maybe it would be fair, but they can do better than fair, can’t they? Fair is the bare minimum.

After a long pause she smiles faintly back at him, and sits down at Finn’s side again.

 

***

 

Poe used to speak to his dad every week or so, before he deserted. He hasn’t asked him outright for advice since he left the Academy, though he got it anyway, mostly in the form of pauses and questions. He knows now that that’s the only advice young people will accept. His dad was letting him work it out for himself.

Now he would ask, if only there was a way to safely get messages back. He turns it over and over, sets BB-8 telemetric equations until it beeps mournfully at him and finally refuses to run any more. There are no safe channels into the Resistance at the moment.

Still, when General Organa joins him in the mess after a late flight one night, he finds himself asking anyway. It can’t hurt to ask, can it?

“I was wondering if there’s any way to speak to my dad,” he says, deliberately casual. “An old holo message exchange, anything like that?”

She puts her glass down and looks at him.

“Is everything alright at home?”

“Yeah, as far as I know.”

She doesn’t ask, except that her silence asks for her.

“No, I just wanted some – some advice. You know. Personal – advice.”

He’s already regretting raising this. Rationally, he knows Leia Organa is a real person with problems and fears and hopes of her own, a personal life as vivid and messy as his, but a small part of him still sees her as the Princess Leia of legend. The woman who brought down an Empire and founded the New Republic, and decidedly _not_ someone he wants to look pathetic in front of with his hopeless crush.

He doesn’t know what to say when she puts both elbows on the table and says,

“Well, personal advice from your father will be infinitely better than mine, but is it anything you can tell me about?”

Poe sighs and takes a deep breath. He sits there looking at his unfinished meal and feeling completely ridiculous before he takes the plunge, like the moment before you engage in a bombing run.

“It’s not a big deal. I just wanted to talk to him about someone I – like,” he clears his throat, darts a glance up at her. “I like someone a lot, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me in the same way -”

“According to the rumours I hear, everybody likes you.”

He flashes a smile at her, grateful. “Yeah, but there’s liking and liking, you know? This person’s, uh, younger, and he likes a lot of people. A lot of people like him, so he’s out there having fun – like he should be - and what I really need is for my dad to tell me to get over it and move on. So you know, if you could tell me the same thing, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sometimes these things work out, you know, Poe,” she says instead. “Your father might tell you that.”

Poe pulls a face. “He _might_ ,” he concedes. “It’d all depend on how I told the story, but I’d have to tell it honestly or the advice wouldn’t help, would it?”

He could tell Kes everything, but it isn’t fair on Finn to tell General Organa. Maybe sometimes you can do better than fair, but it’s a good place to start from. It’s not like this is Finn’s fault, except in the sense that Finn saved his life and that’s the only reason he’s still alive to get into emotional messes like this.

Poe doesn’t tell her and he isn’t going to tell her, but just when he opens his mouth to elaborate without naming names, Finn and Rey come into the mostly empty hall. His heart thumps at the sight of them, and he knows in a second that his face has given him away.

Leia turns to look at them as they make their way past rows of benches and tables, past cleaning droids clearing away from the last few stragglers, and then turns back to Poe with a completely straight face.

“I officially know nothing about this, you understand,” she murmurs as they approach. “You have not told me anything so I don’t know anything.”

“But what should I _do?_ ” he asks desperately, leaning towards her.

“Record a holo for your father,” she says, patting him on the shoulder as she rises. “I’ll do my best to get an answer to you.”

 

Finn won’t stop asking him if he’s alright.

He seems to be assuming that Poe’s private conversation with the General means something is wrong, or maybe Poe’s face tipped him off.

It’s a special form of torment. Like a flame asking if it hurts when you put your hand in it, except the flame would never understand your answer. Finn would understand just fine, and everything would be awkward and horrible, and that’s why Poe can’t possibly explain. Instead, he tells him:

“I’m fine, buddy. Really. It’s just been a long time since I talked to my dad, but everything’s great!”

And then he feels worse, because Finn doesn’t even remember his family to miss them, and Rey’s is so long gone that she must know they’re never coming back. He’s the lucky one here, and yet he has a pair of beautiful concerned orphans escorting him back to his quarters and wanting to make him feel better. Finn puts an arm round his shoulders and asks again, lower, so only Poe can hear him,

“You sure you’re ok?”

“Sure! Why wouldn’t I be?” Poe replies. He even dredges up a smile. With Finn’s arm around him, he can’t think of any reason he wouldn’t be ok.

Finn doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he doesn’t push it. Rey doesn’t ask personal questions at all. Poe likes that about her.

They have sweet wine someone brought back from Coruscant, and salted groundnuts, and the two of them shove clothes and flight manuals and datapads out of the way and make themselves at home. Poe finds himself sitting on his bed with Rey on one side and Finn on the other, and he’s very glad that even if he didn’t get around to tidying up much, he did at least change the sheets.

BB-8 chirps happily at them and scrolls through an immense library of holos so that Rey can choose something.

She’s working her way through the classics, apparently, because Poe hasn’t seen this one since he was a kid. Finn hasn’t seen it at all – it’s adventure and romance loosely based on the Rebellion, and the First Order don’t show that sort of degenerate material to their troops. Finn _loves_ it.

Watching the two of them discover 20 year old holos and getting tipsy on Coruscant wine on his bed is possibly the most agonising way Poe can think of to spend an evening. It’s the sort of delicious torment that drives people to poetry or song, and he never wants it to end. When the first holo finishes, he asks BB-8 to put on another.

“This one, you’re gonna love this one,” he tells them, pouring out the last of the wine. “Everyone cries at this one. But in a good way.”

He really did want to know if they’d cry too, but instead his long day in hyperspace catches up with him. Somewhere towards the middle of the holo he falls asleep, and wakes up to find the room dark and Rey pulling the blankets over him. Finn is lying next to him, face mashed into his arm, and when Rey kisses him on the forehead he doesn’t even stir.

Poe blinks at her in the dark.

“Do you want me to move him?” she whispers.

“Uh, no, he’s good,” Poe whispers back. “There’s space.”

He almost forgets to breathe when she leans over and kisses him too, a barely-there touch of her lips on his forehead that makes him shiver.

Then the door hisses open and closes again behind her, and she’s gone.

Poe lies awake, listening to Finn’s slow breathing beside him. His face is a blur in the dark, only the faint glow from BB-8’s charging station to see by. It feels like a gift, some force of nature you can’t predict, like shooting stars or a meteor shower, a phenomena with meaning attached even when there is none. A celestial light show in the sky is just debris burning up in a planet’s atmosphere; Finn has just fallen asleep here because he’s tired. Poe has to remember that.

He watches Finn sleep for a long time, a complicated ache high in his chest, until his eyes close in spite of himself.

 

The first thing he sees when he wakes up is Finn blinking sleepily at him.

He rubs his hand over his face and smiles. “Sorry I fell asleep in your bed.” His voice is deeper than usual, still rough with sleep.

“Hey, any time, buddy,” Poe tells him, smiling back. It’s one of those polite things people say, and if Poe happens to mean it completely literally, well. Finn doesn’t need to know that.

Early light is filtering in through the viewport, refracted green from the forest outside. Finn looks impossibly young, and Poe feels a thousand years old next to him. Finn lies there on his side, looking at him, until Poe closes his eyes and shifts closer.

He rubs his nose against Finn’s until Finn huffs out a laugh he feels on his cheek.

“What are you doing?” he whispers.

“My dad used to tell me people on ice planets kiss like this. If you kiss the usual way, your tongue might freeze.”

“And do they?” Finn asks.

“Nah. He was kidding,” Poe murmurs. “I was kinda disappointed when I found out.”

“That’s tough,” Finn agrees, and Poe can hear the smile in his voice. It’s the smile he can’t resist, in the end.

Poe closes the gap to kiss him, and Finn sighs into it, rolls on top of him, all his weight holding Poe down as they make out.

It’s slow and sleepy, and for the longest time neither of them moves to do anything except kiss. Their bodies fit together like they were meant to be there, and Poe just lets it wash over him. He isn’t thinking about anything except the feel of Finn on top of him, surrounding him, the depth of his kisses: his arousal is there, building, but it’s not urgent. Right now he doesn’t need to do anything except lie here and kiss Finn.

When Finn shifts to get a hand on his erection, Poe hears himself groan like it’s coming from someone else, and then he’s thrusting frantically up into Finn’s tight grip and coming all over himself with a gasp thirty seconds later.

He had no idea he was so close, and he would be mortified except Finn is looking at him like he’s just done something _amazing_. Good amazing, not embarrassing amazing.

“Uh, sorry,” Poe pants. “But listen, it’s not my fault you’re so hot. This has gotta happen to you a lot, right? Sorry I couldn’t do better than the masses, but -”

“No, that doesn’t happen a lot, you’re amazing, Poe -” Poe will take the compliment, of course he’ll take the compliment, even if he can’t quite believe a teenage lack of self-control is getting such a positive reaction. “Honestly that was the hottest thing I’ve ever _seen_ ,” Finn says, and kisses him so hard he can hardly breathe, tongue fucking him in the best, filthiest way.

Poe has to believe that he found it hot, because that’s Finn’s erection digging into his stomach and Finn is starting to hump him as he kisses him as if he doesn’t even know he’s doing it, making little desperate noises as he moves.

“I might not last much longer than you did,” he gasps when he comes up for air, and Poe knows how to take a hint.

“Yeah - get up here,” he says, scooting down as he urges Finn to move up. Maybe it’s a flashy move to go for, but he feels like he has something to make up for here.

Finn has to roll off with a curse to struggle out of his pants as Poe shoves the pillow under his head and laughs up at him.

“I’m dying here, don’t laugh at me,” Finn says, grinning, and then his knees are either side of Poe’s head and his cock is _right there_ , thick and hard and wet at the tip as he leans forward and Poe opens his mouth and takes him in.

Finn doesn’t last very long, but the couple of minutes it takes to bring him to climax are already up there among the most intense sexual experiences of Poe’s life. Sure he’s just come, but the willing powerlessness of lying here as Finn controls the depth, the pace, just fucks his mouth as hard as he wants, is pressing every single one of his buttons.

And Finn _isn’t_ moving especially hard or going very deep, that’s not what this is about. It’s knowing that he could, and Poe just has to trust that he won’t. Finn seems to know exactly how much he can take – Finn’s watching him so carefully, biting his lip and watching his own cock slide in and out of Poe’s mouth. Poe gazes up at him, and when their eyes meet he is totally undone.

Finn groans from deep in his chest when orgasm hits him, curling forward over Poe as if he can’t stay upright, shooting deep into his mouth and down his throat. He was going to pull away, Poe felt him pulling away, but Poe’s hands are firm on his hips, coaxing him to stay just where he is until he’s spent.

 

Poe’s throat feels raw for the rest of the day, and he can’t stop smiling.

He ought to feel bad, and he probably will later: nothing has really changed. But right now he doesn’t even mind when Snap and Karé exchange a look and exclaim, “Dameron got _laid!_ ”

 

***

 

General Organa calls him to see her a few days later, and he doesn’t think it will be anything out of the ordinary. Not that there is ordinary at the moment, but he isn’t expecting the twinkle in her eye when she stands to greet him.

“You wanted to speak to your father, didn’t you?” she says, repressing a smile.

“Yes?”

“We still can’t get messages in and out, but we do have an ally making a supply run via Yavin IV tonight, coming back three days later, if you’d be interested?”

Poe knows Leia would never make a joke like that, taunt someone with the possibility of seeing family if she didn’t mean it, but for a second he still thinks she’s having him on.

“Of course I would!” he says, and then he remembers. He has responsibilities here, a duty to a lot of other people. “But - don’t think I’m ungrateful, but why should _I_ get to go? Half the base wants to see their family, I can’t fly off on vacation if nobody else can.”

It hurts to say it, but he could never look anyone in the eye again if granted himself privileges the rest can’t have.

Leia’s smile broadens as she puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Two things: I’ve practically offered you as slave labour in return for your passage, so it really isn’t a vacation - they need help loading and unloading and handling Republican customs regulations. And they aren’t all that sure about us, so I also need you to charm them into trusting us - ”

This is sounding more like an offer he might be able to accept.

“And secondly, talk to the logistics team: they keep a constantly updated transport manifest, matching people wanting to see family with ships we trust going their way. You aren’t getting special treatment.”

She doesn’t seem to mind when he flings his arms around her.

Poe flies out to Yavin IV that night.

 

Since they can’t get messages in and out, his dad doesn’t know he’s coming.

There’s nobody waiting for him when they touch down, so he doesn’t have to explain away why his eyes are wet. It has been so long since he’s been home that he wondered if it would even feel like home any more, but it does. The precise weight of his body in Yavin’s gravity, the endless green of the forest, the hum of insects and above all the scent of jacaranda flowers: it’s like all his molecules are set to recognise this place as home, even if he never lives here again.

He’s out of uniform but he gets a hero’s welcome at the spaceport anyway – family friends and acquaintances and people who just know a local boy is a big deal in the Resistance. In all the commotion, he doesn’t think of supervising the call that goes out to his dad. Surely they’re just going to tell Kes that he’s here, and he’ll come as soon as he can.

But when Poe spots him arriving in a speeder driven by a woman who puts her hands on his shoulders and says something very intently to him, they walk so slowly into the main terminal that Poe’s afraid Kes must be injured, or sick. The woman is holding his arm in support as they head the wrong way, towards freight collection, and when Poe calls out, “Dad!” and starts running after them, Kes clutches her for a second like he is stricken, like he can’t take in what he’s seeing.

And then he is striding towards Poe until they collide in an embrace that almost knocks them both off their feet.

When Kes lets go he holds Poe at arm’s length and stares at him.

“Kriffing hell, Poe, I thought they’d called me here to collect your _body_ \- ”

Poe flings himself into his arms again and holds on so tight his bones creak. “No, no, no, dad, I’m fine, look at me, I’m fine, why would you - ”

“Alavo!” Kes bellows right next to his ear. “I need a word with you about how we tell people they’ve got a visitor! You didn’t wonder what I was gonna think when you say I got _news from the Resistance_ and it was _best if i came myself_?”

Poe loosens his grip to save his hearing, and sees the port official put a guilty hand over his mouth.

“We thought it would be a nice surprise! I never thought - ”

“Yeah it is, it’s a great surprise - it’s the half hour I spent thinking he was _dead_ I could have done without!”

Poe puts his arm around Kes’s shoulders. “Well, I’m not dead,” he declares redundantly. “I’m the best pilot in the Resistance, you don’t need to worry about me.”

“Of course I need to worry about you! I worry about you _constantly_ , look, it’s turning my hair grey, worrying about you!” Kes yells, loud enough for the whole terminal to hear, and pulls Poe back into another rib-cracking hug.

Poe has to hold on longer this time so as not to let all these people to see him cry.

He lets go, rubbing his eyes and clearing his throat, and Poe sees the woman standing a few steps behind Kes. She has one hand to her breast and is smiling as if Poe losing it and crying on his dad’s shoulder is some kind of intergalactic miracle.

He takes in dark skin, long braids, about Kes’s age, before Kes becomes aware of her a second later, and swipes his sleeve across his eyes before holding out a hand to her.

“Poe, this is Quenza. She’s -” he doesn’t finish the sentence, but there’s no need. It’s clear who she is to Kes. She’s his partner: she drove him here, both of them thinking Poe was dead.

 

Quenza drives them back to the house and then transparently invents an excuse to leave them alone. There are women’s shoes in the hall, and new plants on the kitchen window. If she doesn’t live here, she spends a lot of time here.

“Here,” Kes presses a very strong drink into his hand and leads him out into the garden. Everything is taller, greener, since he was last here, and the air is loud with the chirping of cicadas. It’s warm in a way D’Qar never is and Poe sinks into the bench at his dad’s side and clinks their glasses together, basking in the heat.

Kes tosses back half his drink in one swallow and grips Poe’s knee so hard it hurts.

“Fucking hell, son, you’ve turned me into an old man. Next time just call me yourself, will you?”

“Promise. Next time I’ll fly myself and land right there -” he points into the trees, to the now-mythical spot where Shara once landed her X wing.

Kes pretends to scowl at him.

“I’m growing beans there now, you damn well better not,” he grumbles. “If you just let me know when you’re _coming_ , I’ll clear you a landing spot at the front.”

Poe clinks his glass to Kes’s again and bumps him with his shoulder. He can’t remember the last time being home affected him so strongly, not even his first visit back after he’d officially left. Maybe then he didn’t know as many people who had no home to go back to.

Much later, with darkness to make it all easier, Kes asks, “So how are you doing, really?”

Poe opens his mouth to answer, but all he does is take a deep breath and let it out. How is he doing? He’s not sure he knows. He knows how the Resistance is doing, how many pilots and ships they lost, how many new recruits have joined, which supplies are running low and which are plentiful. He knows that morale is hovering somewhere between hope and desperation. He could say the same for himself, really.

“It’s been tough, lately,” he admits.

Kes nods, an imprecise shape in the dark. “Yeah.”

“But Luke Skywalker is back, and we took out the Starkiller base, so...”

“Yeah, I heard about that - I meant _you_ , Poe.”

Poe scuffs at the dirt with his toe, turns his empty glass around and around between his palms. He isn’t drunk at all.

“Oh, you know,” he says. “Had a run in with the First Order, I was, uh – I got rescued. By a Stormtrooper who deserted and completed my mission. I’m pretty much in love with him.”

Kes barks out a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s how everyone reacts,” Poe says wryly. “Which should probably tell me something.”

Kes peers at him. “Hell, you mean it, don’t you? I thought it was just a - you know, a figure of speech.”

“No. But it was a very important mission, and he really did save my life.”

He’s only a little bit offended when Kes tips his head back and roars with laughter.

“You scared the shit out of me today, I’m allowed to laugh at you now,” he says.

“Knock yourself out,” Poe tells him, resigned.

Kes pulls him close and ruffles his hair. “Ok, ok, I’m done. C’mon, tell me about him. Been a long time since I heard you say you were in love.”

“Yeah. Uh -” he begins, rubs a hand across his face. “It’s not - ”

“Oh. I get it,” Kes says in a different, gentler voice, squeezing his shoulder.

Poe soaks up the silent comfort for a second before he adds, “I was gonna ask you what I should do. If I should just leave things as they are, or say something to him, or what - ”

Kes sighs, leans back on the bench.

“I don’t know, son. Tell me about it.”

So Poe tells him about it. There’s something cathartic about pouring the whole story out to someone who doesn’t know Finn at all, who may have heard about Starkiller but doesn’t know what happened on the _Finalizer_. He spares Kes the details, but somehow once he starts telling it, the beginning of the story feels as important as everything that happened later.

When he’s finished, a light goes on in the house behind them and Quenza’s voice calls out a greeting.

“Lemme think about it,” Kes tells him. “Come in and eat something now, yeah?”

 

They eat spicy Yavin rice Quezna has brought back from the street market, still hot, and Poe watches her with his dad and wishes he hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own damn mess that he never even asked Kes about her. In all the years since Shara died, he’s never seen his dad with anybody. Maybe there was someone, while he was at the Academy or in the Republican fleet, or even when he was still living here. But Kes never said, and Poe never met them.

All he can do is try to make up for it now.

 

**

 

They don’t get back to Poe’s romantic woes until he’s getting out of the speeder at the space terminal three days later, ready to leave, and that’s fine by Poe. Maybe asking for advice was the whole idea when he set off for Yavin IV, but he’s not a kid any more and getting to know the person who already has a life with his father is more important than the chance to whine about how he’s sleeping with Finn but hasn’t even told him he’s interested in more. (In his head, he’s trying out ‘interested in more’ as a way to describe it. It sounds calmer, more rational than he actually feels.)

Kes walks him round to where the traders are waiting for him, and before he turns to go he says,

“I was thinking, you know, about your problem with your guy. Cause you know what me and your mama decided - we were in the middle of a war, but we got married and had you. Ordinary life can’t wait.”

“Can’t it? I kinda thought it had to.”

“Nah. It’s how you fill in the time in between the fighting.”

“Yeah, I can see that. It’s a good way to fill the time alright,” Poe deadpans, and Kes rolls his eyes at him.

“Well listen. I don’t know how it’s gonna turn out: I know _you’re_ gonna be ok because you’re the best pilot in the Resistance -” Poe nods earnestly, like both parts of this statement are just objective fact. “But if something happened to him and you never said anything, you might feel worse about it.”

Poe nods slowly.

“Yeah. Maybe,” he says. He doesn’t want to think about something happening to Finn, or to anyone, but that doesn’t mean it won’t. He can’t keep everybody safe. There’s no such thing as _safe_ in the Resistance.

“Anyway, I’m really – you know, about you and Quezna - it’s great, dad. Really. Even if I can’t sort my shit out, one of the Dameron men has got it together, right?”

Kes’s eyes crinkle. From across the duracrete landing strip, the traders are hailing Poe, calling him aboard.

Kes pulls Poe into a last hug. “I’m trying to lead by example here, son,” he says.

 

The traders don’t say anything as Poe watches the forest turn blue with distance and the whole planet disappear into a green glow behind them as they leave orbit. Two of them pat him awkwardly on the back when he turns away from the viewport, and that second of kindness almost undoes him.

Oh just fuck this, he thinks. I’ve tried avoiding him, I’ve tried getting over him. How much worse can it be just to tell him?

Ordinary life can’t wait: those sound like words to live by. But Poe has the feeling his father is braver than he is.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come and yell at me for STILL not giving this a happy ending on [Tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/)! But yell at me in a nice way. You know what I mean. Yell at me in a way Finn would approve of.


End file.
